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Self Policing PR Spammers
A quick chat with Jim Horton
Shel Holtz wrote up and interesting article about the good and bad aspects of self policing blogs on WebProNews today. He mentioned Jim Horton who has a modest proposal of how to deal with press release spammers. Shel also remembered Jeremey Zawodny’s similar proposal and action which had caused a bit of a stir. Today I am going to get a quick response from Jim Horton about this subject.
Hello Jim, you seem to have made a small wave today with your post about self policing PR spammers, can you tell us a little more about your proposal?
The issue of sending irrelevant releases to the media is as old as publicity. It was originally snail-mail spamming. Editors and reporters still complain about stacks of releases they get daily that have nothing to do with what they write. E-mail spamming of editors and reporters is as old as the general availability of e-mail. Publicity spamming is now happening to bloggers. My proposal was simply this. When irrelevant pitches and releases come to us, we note it publicly in our PR blogs with the names of the firms that have sent them. There is virtue in transparency, as we say in PR, financial reporting and government activity.
Shel Holtz from Webpronews is a little worried about not checking the evidence and facts before “outing” these PR spammers, do you also have a concern?
Shel is right. One can err in exposing a PR firm. On the other hand, Shel defines spam more narrowly than I do. I consider spam any communication that is clearly irrelevant to a blogger when there is no explanation of why it is being sent. For example, had the PR firm that sent me the release written something like the following, I wouldn’t have minded. “We realize you don’t normally cover supermodels and fashion magazines, but we believe this might be of interest to you because (fill in reason here.)” I can think of a reason I might be interested. It is an unusual and retro form of communication for a PR firm to start a fashion magazine. There must be a good reason why this firm is doing it. I would like to know why, and I believe blog readers would too.
As to Shel’s point that on a previous occasion a PR firm made a legitimate mistake, that is understandable. I make plenty. But, when a reporter jumps down my throat for doing so (and reporters have done that), I learn not to do it again. The difference is what happens between me and a reporter is a private communication. What happens in a blog is public. If I understand Shel correctly, he wants me to ask first if there was deliberate intent to send the offending material to me. If the answer is positive, only then would I complain publicly. Shel is more sensitive than I, and he has a point.
Thanks for the chat, I would enjoy interviewing you in full at a further date.
February 2nd, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Wow, sounds about as irrelevant as the original spam PR’s.